New Seasons Market

Favorite meal:
“I’m really easy… there’s not much I don’t like, but when I go back to Poland, there are two things waiting for me: cottage cheese with green onions and chopped radishes, and my mother’s pickle soup.”

Marta credits her attraction to the natural-food industry to her dogs. “I’ve been shopping for them at natural food stores longer than I have for myself,” she laughs. The first time she ever stepped foot in a natural food store was right after she read a long article about the dangers of toxic dog food. It was a small store in Missoula, Montana around 1998.

A few years later she relocated to Portland and applied to Wild Oats near her house in Lake Oswego. “They pretty much hired me on the spot,” she says. We pretty much did the same thing when she came to one of our job fairs in 2005, and we hired her as an Assistant Store Manager for our Concordia store. Not long after that she relocated to our Mountain Park store, then here to our Seven Corners store, where she now serves as Store Manager.

It doesn’t take long to notice that Marta is a perfect fit with New Seasons Market. Her peppy energy and levelheaded disposition make handling one of our busiest stores look easy. “I love the store… the vibrant energy, the personality, our close relationships—it’s not only the customers but our staff too,” she says. “It’s just so alive. It’s almost as if every store is its own city.”

Another thing you might notice about Marta is her lovely accent. She’s originally from Poland and came to the states to study zoology in 1994. She describes the role meals played in her Polish upbringing: “My mother is an awesome cook. Our family would eat every meal together and just talk. That’s what I do when I go back there. I know that I’m blessed to have that, although honestly, I don’t really like being in the kitchen much,” she tells us.

Marta says her husband is the real cook in her family now. “He makes me dinner almost every night. I don’t even like pasta all that much, but his pasta? The best.”

When she’s not doing three things at once in the store, she’s probably just hanging out with her husband, son, two dogs and four cats. “We like to go on walks together,” she says.

You can reach Marta at martam@newseasonsmarket.com.